


Say The Word

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [55]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1950s, M/M, Marijuana, Period-Typical Homophobia, Shades of Fast Approaching Stuckony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 12:39:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14954861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: “You know what my motto was as a kid?”“I’m afraid to ask.”Tony turned his head, gave Steve a glimpse of his smirk. “It’s not illegal if you don’t get caught.”“You understand, don't you,” Steve said over Bucky’s guffaws, “that that’s not how laws actually work.”





	Say The Word

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: It’s not illegal if you don’t get caught. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

“You know what my motto was as a kid?”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

Tony turned his head, gave Steve a glimpse of his smirk. “It’s not illegal if you don’t get caught.”

“You understand, don't you,” Steve said over Bucky’s guffaws, “that that’s not how laws actually work.”

Tony collapsed into giggles. “Steeeeeeeve,” he said, sending the sound up to the sky, to the stars that stared down at them, unmoved, “you are such a fucking square.”

Steve’s face went hot. “I am not.”

“You  _ are _ .” Tony flailed around a little, his arm bumping Steve’s. “Barnes, I don’t know how you do it. What’s it like having a righteous two-by-four as a boyfriend?”

On Steve’s other side, Bucky sat up, shaking the threadbare picnic blanket. “Well,” he drawled, “as long as I’m a good boy, he doesn’t make me recite the Bill of Rights before he lets me in bed.” A grin. “He just holds me to the penal code, that’s all. Don’t you, sweetheart?”

Tony cackled, a gale of reefer-scented laughter, and Steve’s cheeks ticked up another shade of red as Bucky’s hand found his chest, spread out like a starfish, his nails biting nice through Steve’s t-shirt into the soft turn of his flesh.

They’d gone the whole day without touching in any way that wasn’t kosher for one of the guys, but that was before 95% of their friends had left, waving cheerily as they hiked back up the hill and away from the lake. Now it was just the three of them, had been for hours, and the difference was that it’d never been a secret from Tony, that they were together, because for all his drunken debauchery bullshit, his too-loud voice sometimes, his occasional inconsideration, Tony didn’t give a damn who anybody slept with except him. He was the one who’d bang on their door around breakfast and sprawl out at their tiny kitchen table and regale them with stories of last night’s party, last night’s fuck, last night’s jealous boyfriend who showed up after to drag his girl away. 

“We know,” Steve would say, dry as toast. “We heard. Along with the rest of the building. And the block.”

“Mmmhmm, yeah,” Tony would say through a mouthful of Bucky’s A+ scrambled eggs. “But you didn’t hear the parts where people weren’t yelling at the top of their lungs, did you? Huh? So shut up and let me give you the skinny.”

The first time Bucky had leaned over and kissed him in front of Tony--a quick smooch on his way to the shower--Tony hadn’t batted an eye. “Hey, Steve-o,” he’d said, making grabby hands at the jam jar, “pass that shit over here, would ya?”

“To be fair,” Tony had said when Steve’d asked about it later, “that wasn’t my first clue.” They’d been at lunch at a diner down the street from Tony’s office, the remnants of two BLTs strewn on the table between them. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Rogers, but the way your sweet baboo looks at you when your back is turned? Not real subtle.” He flashed a grin and snatched the last of Steve’s fries. “I mean, to be fair, you’ve got a nice ass. Can’t blame the guy.”

For all his annoying tendencies, it was nice to have a friend he didn’t have to lie to. Didn’t have to spin stories of non-existent first dates that went nowhere, of frigid girls from the jewelry counter at Sears who flipped out when he tried to kiss them good night. Not saying anything, he’d learned, was much worse; it only made the other guys at the office rag on him more. The silent routine had worked ok in high school and in college, he’d always kept to himself. But after three years at Strunk and Bunning, he’d learned how to fake it, how to spin tales of the life he was supposed to have, and if he felt gross when he went home to Bucky, held him and kissed him and fucked him until the bullshit of the day was pleasantly blasted away, well. So be it. 

Except he’d gotten spoiled with Tony. Hadn’t realized how much until today, until they’d had the grand idea of driving out of town for the day and inviting their friends--their clueless, hetero friends--to come with them: a few guys from the radio station where Bucky worked, plus a couple of wives; a handful from Steve’s office and their squeezes; and Tony. They’d grilled hot dogs and pretended to know how to fish and drunk too much beer in the bright summer sunshine, stretched out on picnic blankets and watched the sun set, the stars sneak up behind. H e and Bucky had stayed away from each other, had introduced each other as roommates, and even though at some level, this was what their lives were like all the time, having Tony there, dark-eyed and knowing over his tenth or twelfth beer, shone a spotlight for Steve on how stupid it was, all this pretending. What a waste.

The guys from his office, most of them, weren’t happy with the women who hung on their arm or sat elegantly in the grass or who chased them with a sizzling wiener on a stick, calling out jokes. These were temporary situations, accommodations made for what was expected, what their parents wanted them to, and Steve wondered if his colleagues had ever stopped sniffing skirt long enough to consider if that’s what they really wanted out of life: to run from girl to girl until they stumbled into the inevitable--marriage, a child, a big house out in Jersey. It was like they were on a track somebody else had built for them, a track so clever that they couldn’t see it, had no idea they were following someone else’s path.

He and Bucky, though, they were happy. They were settled--downright boring, in Tony’s book, maybe--but so fucking content that some days, Steve thought his heart was set up to burst. They’d known each other their whole lives and Steve had loved Buck just as long but it wasn’t until his last year of college, when he’d come down from Boston for Christmas to stay with his mom, that he let himself understand what that meant. 

Bucky had come over on Christmas Eve, late, after midnight mass, and he and Steve had sat up by the tree, yammering at each other rapid fire until the quiet of the night had settled in, those last dark hours before dawn. 

“So you coming back here when you graduate?” Bucky had said, a little too casual.

“Dunno. Depends on where I can get a job, I guess.”

“You?” Bucky laughed, soft. “You’ll get a job wherever you want, Stevie, smart as you are. Fancy degree like that.”

Steve shifted on the divan, the old rickety one his mom refused to throw out. “Eh, Buck, I don’t know.”

Bucky caught his jittery knee, stopped it with one warm, certain palm. “Yeah, but I do. Don’t sell yourself short, man. I’m not gonna let you do that. Other people may let you get away with that shit, but not me.”

Steve snorted. “When have you ever let me get away with anything?”

A smile crept across Bucky’s face, like a cat stretching out in the sun. “Exactly. That’s my job. To keep your head on straight.”

His hand was still on Steve’s knee, his fingers moving a little, almost like he was kneading, like Steve was clay and only Bucky could help him find the right shape. There was a heat in Steve’s chest, a spill of mulled wine, a murmur, and for the first time in his life, all the years he’d known Bucky, all the times they’d sat just like this, side by side--Steve let himself do what he wanted. He tipped over and caught Bucky’s shirt collar and kissed him. It wasn’t an earth-shattering kiss, nothing wet or dramatic; just a brush of lips, a hint. A question.

“Ok,” Bucky said softly, his hand slipping inside Steve’s thigh. “So maybe straight wasn’t the right word.”

And Bucky was right. In so many excellent ways.

In the spring, he’d gotten five job offers in the city and gone with Strunk and Bunning straight up for the prestige, not the pay. He was only a copy editor, sure, but that anybody was willing to pay him to read, period, felt downright amazing. He made enough to cover his half of the rent in the apartment Bucky found for them: a fourth-floor walk up only two blocks from the subway. A decent building with nice people, most of them new to the city, riding the long tail of the giddy post-war boom. Except for the guy across the hall, Tony Stark. He’d been in New York since his conception, he liked to say, and four years in Europe for Uncle Sam had convinced him that this was his one-and-only town, the one place in the world that he never wanted to leave.

Why he’d chosen that particular building in Brooklyn when his dad owned half of Lower Manhattan, he was reluctant to say.

“Me and the old man don’t see eye to eye,” he’d said the one time Steve had gotten the courage to ask. “He wants the world one way and I’d like to have it another. It’s not something we’re ever gonna get past. So I live my life and he doesn’t live his and that is highly unlikely to change.”

“I’m sorry.”

Tony had raised his eyebrows, grabbed another cig from the crumpled pack on his coffee table. “Yeah, well. I just wish my mom would leave him. She’d be a lot happier. But she never will. She’s loyal to a damn fault.” He took a drag and reached for his drink. “I envy you, Rogers. You know that? The both of you. Not everybody’s got a storybook thing like you.”

“Storybook?” Steve laughed, the sound a little bitter. “Tony, we can’t so much as hold hands in public. Nobody knows that we’re together, except you. And technically, Bucky and me, what we have is a crime. That hardly sounds like Cinderella to me.”

Tony leaned towards Steve, pointing, shaking his head. “No, see, all of that shit is true and yet, Steve, and yet: you’re still happy. Adversity, world’s against you, blah de fucking blah, and when you get down to it, none of that matters. None of that has shaken your love. Not one bit. How could I not envy that?”

Now, stretched out on scratchy plaid under the pine trees, the soft song of the lake just beyond, his boyfriend and his best friend dopey from weed, Steve suddenly wanted nothing more than to leave the stilted feeling he’d been holding onto all day far, far behind.

“Hey,” he said, “Tony. Is there any of that stuff left?”

“That _stuff_ ,” Bucky snickered. “It’s called grass, doll. Just saying the word won’t get you busted. Jesus."

“Well,” Tony said, grand. “Should I take it that you want to try it? Or is this some elaborate ruse designed to give you the chance to dump my stash in the lake? Because if that’s it, then no fucking deal, Rogers.”

Steve sat up so fast that he nearly knocked Bucky over, much to Bucky’s giggly delight. “Light one up, Stark,” he said, sudden sunshine, “and you’ll see.”  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Dear 25-minute time limit: I'm sorry to keep ignoring you this week. It's nothing personal, I promise. Love, Me.


End file.
